Musings – Site CSS

Update: Changed the site around a bit. Thoughts? I think the new content background color is much easier on the eyes…

Heya all!

Talked with a representative about an issue I’ve been having on the site (my WordPress toolbar is… missing). Too long, didn’t read: it’s a problem on their end. They’re working on it now. It broke when I spent $299 of the money all you readers give me (either directly or indirectly) on this site to get it upgraded to the Business plan so that I could improve it and possibly, just possibly, have it so that all of my content is posted here and redirected to here from NovelUpdates, rather than the majority redirecting to MoonBunnyCafe.

But as for the reason I’m making this post, I am messing around with the site’s CSS a bit. First thing I did was get the readable area to be somewhat larger on bigger screen sizes (sizes larger than the max size of the white area).

Here’s an example (left new, right old)

I need to figure out how to reduce the side of the sidebar a little next. If anyone knows, that’d be a big help to me. Not sure why, but .sidebar-right is actually the buffer area between the left-hand side of the text and the end of the content area. Hmm. Here’s the current code I’m using:

Post navigation

21 thoughts on “Musings – Site CSS”

It’s actually better to remove sidebar. Not only it will be easier to mess with css without it, sidebars on the right draws too much attention and makes sites hard to read. And yours don’t have anything remotely useful anyway, just trinkets. Subscription and RSS can be moved to top or bottom.

Of course. But it would also take time for me to learn and set up. And manage. I paid to not do it all myself because I simply don’t have the time. Imagine how people would react to me not translating for a long time just to set that up? orz

I’m planning on learning enough over the course of this 1 year plan so that I could set it all up myself and not have to renew it.

Yeah, I time is at a major premium for me right now. It was either pay the money and translate, don’t get it done and translate, or pay now and translate and put it off for a year for me to learn it when I get time.

I suppose there was also the path of “get someone else to do it” … but I don’t know anyone that would do that for me. No offense to any readers, but I’m not sure I could trust anyone other than a select few people with being my site’s admin.

I’m a CS major that doesn’t know how to properly set up and manage a site…. *sigh*.

Don’t worry, useless leechers we are, can wait 🙂 BTW, most people can’t do shit, if they majored CS or something similar. And people, who can actually do decent job usually are college dropouts (if they ever bothered to apply, that is).

Talked to a number of IT people in charge of managing applicants for jobs on the west coast here through Reddit and other places like linked.in. They don’t even bother with people without a degree, usually not even without a master’s for jobs above general ‘manage this database’ or ‘be a codemonkey’. The IT market isn’t exactly flooded with Americans, of course—that’s why there have been so many people immigrating through the ‘genius’ visa—but it doesn’t seem like I could get a decent job without that particular piece of paper.

Your experience in the field has been different, I take it?

Haven’t gotten help from parents or relatives at all when it comes to world knowledge/jobs/money, everything’s been self taught. There’s a lot that I don’t know, but at least I know that I don’t know it. So there’s that, at least.

I’m not in USA, and i repair electronics since 16. Well, actually since 11, but Famicom knockoffs and shitty radio/cassette players doesn’t count 🙂 Dropped school after 9 mandatory years, back then it was mainly because i was a lone father already, so i had to earn money. But looking back, it was probably the best thing that could happen to me. Then i worked a bit at internet-cafe, then was copyright-unfreindjy job at phone repair store, where i stuffed phones with latest music, games and pictures. Then i shifted to repairs, it was a time, when lead-free bullshit almost got Siemens and Sony-Ericsson bankrupt, and reballing was actually a solution. Then to local TV station next door (because they had AC), where i did, well, everything, from tending to computers to making commercial. And then to repair shop where i still work, as one of the “last instance” guys in my city, because, sad story, in most other stores nobody can read schematics and make out 2+2, just heatgun and replace boards.
Well, i learn quickly when i solve real problems, not abstract mumbo-jumbo, even if it’s something i have no slightest idea about.
As where to start… you should decide what you like more, translating, tech, or both, and offer your services to anybody available. Neighbors, charity organizations, some random store, whatever. The more people know you, the more reputation you have – the higher your chances for success. Don’t be afraid to walk in and ask, i found my current job exactly that way. There was no vacation listed anywhere, i just walked in, asked: “Need master?” and got a good job.

regarding readability, I personally think that you shouldn’t invest too much effort for them… someone like me feel dizzy whenever I read things on bright screen (bright bg, dark text), thankfully FireFox has this great “Reader View” feature to fix this problem. So yeah… people like me will most likely wont realize whatever CSS changes you made as long as it still too bright. This is the case for new chapters which I’ve yet to read.

For re-reading purpose, I usually compile my favorite stories into EPUB files, which basically scrapped everything except the actual content.

TL;DR: ZirusMusings is a site focusing on content, and its been successfully doing that so far. No need to unnecessarily spend your time on things on secondary stuffs like design/layout.

If you really need to do it, I’m pretty sure there are some of your regular patrons with the right skillset who would step up to help you to release new chapters a second faster. I’m no expert but I definitely would help if you were to ask.

You should look into DigitalOcean for hosting. $5/month for a droplet (vps) and you can do whatever you want on it. They have really great guides to setting up a wordpress droplet, and setting up ssl. Even a newbie in server management could follow it and be up and running within an hour. Charging $30 a month for wordpress hosting is daylight robbery.

If you’ve already paid, then you are probably stuck there for a year. But you don’t deserve getting robbed like this.

C’mon man! Why putting ads when you’re already getting close to $800 USD each month on patreon!? I’m getting one ad whenever I click a link, 4 or 5 ads on each chapter/post/page PLUS pop-up ads when using mobile browsers. Greediness is the only word that comes to my mind when patreon tranlators pull something like this. I’m one of your patrons btw and this is really disappointing.

I’ve been paying money to WordPress the past few years to make it so that my site has no ads. I decided day before yesterday yesterday that I would try upping the plan to install plug-ins. To attempt to offset that $300 cost (for a year), I enabled AdSense (google) ads to see if that is possible. I’ve never dealt with adding ads, though. Was going to make a post about it today since I was wiped after my day of college (I’m there for 11 hours…). Even so, I made certain that there’s no ads that interfere with the site’s readability and usability: there’s no sidebar ads, there’s no header ads, there’s no ads in the chapters themselves, and definitely no redirecting ads. Sfaik by what I’m looking at in the settings panel, there’s: 1 guaranteed in the footer, 1 appears within the comments / ending area, and 1-2 within posts–again note, none within the chapters you read, those are pages.

The site’s current layout and the upcoming light/dark mode plug in I’ll be buying in a few hours is an example of the upsides to me turning ads on. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe people wouldn’t mind the ads since they will never affect them being able to read what I produce.

Is wanting to break even on the cost of being able to improve the site greediness, really?

Сan you return sidebar back, in past was more convenient, came back to the site and immediately Recent Comments, search and you do not have to rewind the whole page down to see them.
PS. in a new color the print slightly melds with background, in my option white was better. no offense